


as if it's your last

by Joana789



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Healing, M/M, Post-Canon, Relationship Study, can you believe that they are happy, i'm tearing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 09:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13544952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joana789/pseuds/Joana789
Summary: Neil is five years older than he ever thought he’d be.





	as if it's your last

**Author's Note:**

> university is draining the creative thinking out of me. sorry! i don't even know what this thing is.

 

Neil is five years older than he ever thought he’d be.

Nothing prompts this, really. It’s just realization. He’s in bed, heavy-limbed and tired but still aware of Andrew’s frame inches away from him, weight dipping the mattress, and he’s watching the shadows shift in the square of the window and the thought just comes. It sinks in fast and then stays beneath the surface like a stone thrown into water, a weird feeling that he’s not sure how he should approach. It curls and twists in his mind like smoke.

Neil doesn’t think about his mother, or father, or anyone, really. Everything he thinks is that five years is a long time. Everything he thinks is that he never thought he’d get so much of it.

And yet. There he is.

Neil shifts on the bed, then shifts his gaze from the window, shifts his thoughts, from this to nothing, then back, because here’s one of the things he’s learned during those five years of extended stay: there is no need to count the escape routes from buildings anymore. He falls asleep with his back to the door every night now, lets other people get close, lets himself get lulled into the sense of security that sometimes tastes bitter and like a lie, but sometimes doesn’t.

That’s not something Neil thinks he’ll ever really get used to.

  
———

  
There are two minutes of the game left on the clock, and they’re winning. The crowd is a bustling thing around them, moving in tandem like waves of the sea, and Neil breathes through his exhaustion and looks at the fluorescent lights high up by the ceiling and his blood screams at him, _run_ , so he does, counts his steps, throws the ball. The goal lights up red.

Neil feels completely, utterly alive.

  
———

  
Here is the thing — his name is Neil Abram Josten, he is five years older than he’d ever thought he would be, and he is scared. Not of knives or the sound of gunfire, not anymore, and not of the truth, but of this — back when his name was Alex, he did not like tea, and Neil Josten prefers coffee as well. Chris’ favorite fruit was strawberries and Neil thinks about it whenever he sees Andrew get into another pint of strawberry ice cream. Nathaniel could load a gun as quickly as he could throw a knife and Neil still remembers the motions in his own muscles.

His mother used to take him to shitty diners near highways where no one would pay attention to the two of them, get them rooms in shitty motels, and she used to grip his hand so hard he was sure she wanted it to hurt, and she used to say, _never let them know who you are. Always be someone else, anyone else. The moment they know you, you’re dead._

If you mix enough colors together, you will get nothing at all and everything at once. That’s Neil.

  
———

  
Neil never asks Andrew what it is that keeps him close, here, by Neil’s side five years down the road. He doesn’t think he would get an answer to the question — or not an easy one anyway. It is both equally ridiculous as it is extraordinary that Andrew Minyard decided to settle down with the mess of a person that is Neil Josten.

Neil likes to think that he knows what Andrew’s reason is.

Because Andrew makes Neil coffee on early mornings and texts him after the games, and tells him to breathe in the hazy moments after nightmares and kisses him outside their apartment building like he wants to prove something and pins his hips to the bed with heavy hands and with purpose, and Neil likes to think that Andrew’s reason is the same as his own.

They don’t need confessions.

  
———

  
Here’s another thing Neil’s learned during those five years — to try and wear his scars like trophies. He looks in the mirror and thinks about knives and cold days and unbearable heat, and then he thinks about Andrew tracing the scars with careful fingers and unwavering attention, and he does not shiver like he used to. Those are his reminders of pain, tokens of the battles he fought and lost, of the battles he fought and won in the end. People call him reckless, the press calls him the fastest player on the court, and a danger, an invincible boy, _let’s see when he realizes he’s wrong._

Neil doesn’t say he knew that from the start.

  
———

  
Neil wakes up at 5:30 every morning, slips out of bed, goes for a run. Even if he is every color at once mixed together, or nothing at all — _patchwork body_ , Andrew says occasionally — this is the one thing that has always been there. Running. Getting away. Neil clings onto it.

Andrew is usually still asleep, but today, when Neil walks out of the bathroom ready to head out the door into the cold morning outside, he finds Andrew already looking, blond hair messy and eyes just on the side of unfocused.

Neil leans over the bed, leans down, presses a kiss to the corner of Andrew’s mouth before muttering, ”Go back to sleep.”

Andrew blinks at him, then lifts one hand and curls his palm around the side of Neil’s neck, fingers pressing against his pressure point, briefly, and then the touch is gone and so is Andrew’s hazy attention when he closes his eyes. A _good morning_.

Here’s the difference between them, one of many — Neil treats time like it’s golden. Andrew lets the days slip through his fingers, sleeps late, treats the importance of it like it’s not there at all, because it’s really not there, for him. For Neil, time is something he had to earn, one way or another, something he scraped for until his hands bled and muscles were shaking with effort, something he stole from others like he did with so many different things. A week he begged off. An hour he pickpocketed like change at train stations.

There used to be a time when he had his own death planned out. Marked in the non-existent calendar in the back of his mind, circled like other people might circle anniversaries or birthdays, in screaming color that no one else but Neil would ever know about.

That’s why — Neil will take all the time he can get, and use it.

  
———

  
The first time Neil goes to a therapy session in a flimsy thing, ill-fitting and uncomfortable. His coach had been suggesting it for a while, and two of his new teammates. Andrew, occasionally. It’s not like it matters, but Neil finally agrees after a particularly bad night when he wakes up shaking and then Andrew has to talk him through it in an emotionless voice as they sit on the cold bathroom floor, and it still takes Neil another two hours to pull himself together enough to go back to bed.

Andrew kisses him before Neil gets out of the car.

It helps.

  
———

  
Neil doesn’t think he’s all that stupid. Andrew might call him an idiot, but that serves a different purpose and they both know that. Neil can speak four languages and mimic twice as many accents. The deal he signed right after college with his first professional Exy team rests safely in one of the folders on the shelf in his bedroom. He knows his way around a gun, and around a knife, too. He can treat almost any wound.

That’s who he is. That’s what he feels like, sometimes — a sum of random factors, things he made up or learned because he was forced to. His mother said always be someone else and that’s what he did.

He first says that to Andrew as they’re sitting on their living room windowsill, smoking. Neil looks at the smoke curling in the air as he talks. When he’s finished, Andrew takes what’s left of the cigarette from him and puts it out. His touch on Neil’s fingers lingers just a second longer than necessary.

”You got it wrong,” Andrew says, taking another cigarette out from the package but not lighting it, just looking. He shifts his gaze to Neil’s eyes after a second. ”You are not all of them at once. It’s the other way around.”

  
———

  
Neil is five years older than he ever thought he would be and here’s the thing — it doesn’t feel wrong. Whether it is stolen time or extended stay or a golden gift he had to earn himself, it hardly matters, because he’s still here. He doesn’t make backup plans anymore. Puts the razor to his throat while shaving and doesn’t flinch. Locks the door at the end of the day and checks twice, but then leaves it be. Surprise visits from Dan and Matt are fine, now.

People say this is called healing. Neil likes to think of it as living.

The light of the afternoon reflects in Andrew’s hair, then in his eyes as he turns and catches Neil looking. They do that a lot — watching each other even though they know nobody isn’t going anywhere, not really.

Neil smiles.

”What’s so funny,” Andrew asks at that, a flat question that barely sounds like one at all, and he doesn’t protest when Neil tips his head forward and cautiously rests it on Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew’s frame is loose and relaxed, still. They are past asking for permission with words, at this point. Five years down the road, where Neil never thought they would be, they are past many things.

”Nothing,” Neil says, letting his smile widen a fraction. ”I’m just happy.”

It feels good.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://ohandrews.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/thisbitcch1)


End file.
